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ChatBeacon vs. Sparkcentral (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    ChatBeacon

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AChatBeacon (formerly SightMax) is a live chat tool from SmartMax Software headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma.N/A

    Sparkcentral (discontinued)

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASparkcentral was a social customer care solution and cloud-based customer engagement platform that catered specifically to customer care teams within large enterprises, enabling them to deliver real-time social customer service. Sparkcentral was acquired by Hootsuite in January 2021. The product has since been discontinued.N/A
    Pricing
    ChatBeaconSparkcentral (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ChatBeaconSparkcentral (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    ChatBeaconSparkcentral (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    ZoomInfo Chat
    Score7.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    SAP Conversational AI (discontinued)
    Score6.8 out of 10
    Khoros Service
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS Chatbot
    Score8.4 out of 10
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ChatBeaconSparkcentral (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (16 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ChatBeaconSparkcentral (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SmartMax Software
    ChatBeacon is a decent choice for on-premises chat support, but the clunky agent UI sparks no joy. If your organization can use a cloud-based solution, there are plenty of other fish in the sea
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral has an extremely dedicated customer service team The platform UX is brilliant Reports are very detailed & easy to export The system is stable more than 98% of the time Queue management is extremely easy They need to work on a mobile app / making the website mobile friendly The ability to add more social media channels is essential
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    SmartMax Software
    • Easy to install and configure.
    • Easy for customers to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • The biggest advantage of the Sparkcentral platform is its "inbox zero" philosophy. With this, our customer support requests are queued within the app, and agents need to work down the queue to keep it empty.
    • The app is designed from the ground up for customer care - instead of taking a generic social platform, and sprinkling in some customer care tools. Everything about Sparkcental is designed for helping our customers.
    • Sparkcentral allows us to do much better CRM. We can make customer notes, see recent interactions, determine who helped the customer (and when).
    Read full review
    Cons
    SmartMax Software
    • ChatBeacon is just SightMax with a fresh coat of paint.
    • The entire agent UI is remarkably worse than SightMax.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • In the beginning our team had the option to see what another user was typing as they responded to a post. With the latest update, this was taken away. That feature was key for us to shadow agents remotely who are still in training to provide real time feedback.
    • Our company has a number of different brands that we manage. Having a truly unified queue would be a great addition for us!
    • The bulk resolve should allow the option to select on the posts that you wish to resolve instead of selecting a time frame for bulk resolve. Often we find that marketing posts generate more volume in the evening. However, there are sometimes posts where the customer needs assistance during that time. So, if we were to bulk resolve for a certain number of evening hours we would potentially miss a customer's concern through that option as it is currently. But, if the option was to go through and select on all marketing posts and then bulk resolve you would ensure that you are not missing a post where a customer needs assistance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    SmartMax Software
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral has never given us a good reason to consider any other option. Aside from all the positive points I mentioned in previous areas of this review, something else that has really impressed us is their customer service (makes sense, they're a customer service company after all!). Any time we have a question or concern, we send them an email and we get a response almost instantly.
    Read full review
    Usability
    SmartMax Software
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    The system meets all my expectations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    SmartMax Software
    Support is a strong point for ChatBeacon - their support team is small, but you definitely get white-glove service. Zero complaints about ChatBeacon support!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    SmartMax Software
    Before using SightMax (now ChatBeacon), we used AliveChat, which was an OK SaaS product, but the team operating the service would frequently restart the servers after maintenance and forget to start our instance back up. ChatBeacon(SightMax) as on-prem software eliminated this concern. We've been evaluating ChatBeacon vs. other products lately, and we really like how DeskPro stacks up vs. ChatBeacon - ChatBeacon is purely a chat product, and DeskPro does web chat/phone/email ticketing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral does what it has offered to do, where other software made empty promises, Sparkcentral delivers. They also inform us, anytime they are undergoing maintenance or when Twitter or Facebook has an API change, where in previous cases we would have to discover this ourselves.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    SmartMax Software
    • Using website chat (often with an agent:customer ratio of up to 1:3 or more ) vs. phone support (with an agent ratio of 1:1) has greatly reduced support costs in every business unit.
    • Providing realtime feedback and links (vs. phone calls) has greatly improved the turnaround on the sales and customer inquiry processes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Customers appreciate fast responses to the things they post on social media. This tool allows that to happen.
    • The dashboard allows us to keep up with how many are waiting in our queue so we can keep up with how busy we are during the day and manage it.
    • Customer satisfaction has seemed to increase while using this tool.
    • Being able to add notes with the customers address and phone info is awesome as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots